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The American Prospect - articles by authorenTrump's Curious Coalitionhttp://prospect.org/article/trumps-curious-coalition
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<p>A supporter of President Donald Trump waits in a nearby neighborhood before a campaign rally at the North Side Middle School in Elkhart, Indiana</p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>rump’s strategy for keeping power is to build up his coalition of America’s white working class and the nation’s ownership class.</p>
<p>It’s a curious coalition, to say the least. But if Democrats don’t respond to it, it could protect Trump from impeachment and even re-elect him. It just might create a permanent Republican majority around an axis of white resentment and great wealth.</p>
<p>Two decades ago, Democrats and Republicans competed over the middle class. They battled over soccer moms and suburban “swing” voters. </p>
<p>Since then the middle class has shrunk while the working class has grown, and vast wealth has been accumulated by a comparative few who now own a large portion of America. Some of their wealth has taken over American politics. </p>
<p>Enter Trump.</p>
<p><a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pewresearch.org%2Ffact-tank%2F2016%2F12%2F08%2Fgop-gained-ground-in-middle-class-communities-in-2016%2F%2520Trump%2520is%2520counting%2520on%2520the%2520unwavering%2520support%2520of%2520these%2520mostly%2520white%2520working%2520class%2520voters.&amp;t=NzM4MWU1MDkyMmUyYjc4NjZmNDEzODU0ZjBjYWEwZWZiMDkyYmIzMyxDQjA3eGhQcw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F174085721520&amp;m=1">Counties whose voters shifted from Obama to Trump in 2016</a> had lost economic ground to the rest of America, even more than did solidly-Republican counties. Trump is counting on the unwavering support of these mostly white working class voters.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, much of the ownership class has come over to Trump. He’s counting on it to bankroll Republican politicians who are loyal to him.</p>
<p>Since becoming president, Trump has sought to reward both sides of this coalition—tossing boatloads of money to the ownership class, and red meat to the white working class. </p>
<p>One boatload is the corporate and individual tax cut, of which America’s richest 1 percent will take home an estimated <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2Fpolicy-and-politics%2F2017%2F12%2F18%2F16791174%2Frepublican-tax-bill-congress-conference-tax-policy-center&amp;t=ZDkxMWIyZTk5YjZlMjg2ZTk2OGViMjQwZmE2NTQxZDRmMWI1MzMyNixDQjA3eGhQcw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F174085721520&amp;m=1">82 percent by 2027</a>, according to the Tax Policy Center. </p>
<p>Another boatload is coming from government itself, which Trump has filled with lobbyists who are letting large corporations do whatever they want—using public lands, polluting, defrauding consumers and investors, even employing children—in order to push profits even higher. </p>
<p>Trump’s red meat for the white working class is initiatives and tirades against unauthorized immigrants and foreign traders—as if they’re responsible for the working class’s lost ground—and other symbolic gestures of economic populism, along with episodic racist outbursts, and support for guns and evangelicals. </p>
<p>Every time Trump sends more money to the wealthy he sends more red meat to his base. </p>
<p>Weeks ago, after announcing he’d seek another big tax cut before the midterm elections—“phase two,” as he termed it—he threatened China with a trade war; arranged another crackdown on unauthorized immigrants, including a carefully-choreographed plan to break up families at the border and attack sanctuary cities; and vowed to go after pharmaceutical companies.</p>
<p>Yet red meat goes only so far. At some point, you’d think, the white working class would realize that the only real beneficiaries of the Trump coalition are the super-rich. </p>
<p>Trump’s clampdown on foreign imports and immigrants won’t raise working-class wages. It’s more likely to erode their paychecks because it will cause consumer prices to rise. Yet it leaves American multinational corporations unscathed. They don’t make their money off trade and don’t rely on immigrants; they fabricate and sell from all over the world. If a trade war with China breaks out, they’ll merely shift their sourcing to other nations.</p>
<p>His tax cut put a few dollars in working-class pockets but is already requiring cuts in services they rely on, and will demand more. </p>
<p>His plan to bring down drug prices won’t make drugs any cheaper. Instead, it’s a big win for drug companies whose prices won’t be controlled and won’t have to negotiate with Medicare and Medicaid. </p>
<p>Trump doesn’t want his base to know that the only way they can permanently become better off is by reining in the ownership class.</p>
<p>He doesn’t want them to recall that the ownership class is largely responsible for hollowing out the middle class. For decades the captains of American industry, backed by the nation’s biggest investors, have squeezed payrolls by outsourcing abroad, cutting or eliminating job benefits, busting unions, and shifting to part-time and contract work. </p>
<p>He’d rather they didn’t see that corporate profits—flowing into higher executive pay and higher share prices—have constituted a steadily larger portion of economy, while wages have been a steadily lower portion. Most economic gains have gone to the top. We have had socialism for the rich and harsher capitalism for everyone else. </p>
<p>If Democrats were smart they would expose all this—and commit themselves to reversing these trends by creating a multi-racial coalition of the poor, working class, and what’s left of the middle.</p>
<p>Trump’s curious coalition endures only because he’s a clever salesman and conman. The only way it can possibly succeed at entrenching Trump is if Democrats say and do little or nothing. </p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 22 May 2018 09:00:00 +0000230235 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichTrump's Drug Pricing Scamhttp://prospect.org/article/trumps-drug-pricing-scam
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<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>rump promised to rein in drug prices. It was his only sensible campaign promise. </p>
<p>But the plan he announced Friday does little but add another battering ram to his ongoing economic war against America’s allies. </p>
<p>He calls it “American patients first,” and takes aim at what he calls “foreign freeloading.” The plan will pressure foreign countries to relax their drug price controls. </p>
<p>America’s trading partners “need to pay more because they’re using socialist price controls, market access controls, to get unfair pricing,” said Alex Azar, Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, who, perhaps not incidentally, was a former top executive at the drug maker Eli Lilly and Company. </p>
<p>By this tortured logic, if other nations allow drug companies to charge whatever they want, U.S. drug companies will then lower prices in the United States.</p>
<p>This is nonsensical. It would just mean more profits for U.S. drug companies. (Revealingly, the stock prices of U.S. pharmaceutical companies rose after Trump announced his plan.) </p>
<p>While it’s true that Americans spend <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fpharmacycheckerblog.com%2Fstruggling-to-afford-meds-americans-spend-more-on-drugs-than-other-countries&amp;t=Y2ZmZmY2Y2I0Yjg0YWViM2I3ZjFkYjc4OWFhZTRlYzg5ZWRmMDA2ZixydVpNbVJJZQ%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F119767465905&amp;m=1">far more </a>on medications per person than do citizens in any other rich country—even though Americans are no healthier—that’s not because other nations freeload on American drug companies’ research. </p>
<p>Big Pharma in America spends more on advertising and marketing than it does on research—often tens of millions to promote a single drug. </p>
<p>The U.S. government supplies much of the research Big Pharma relies on through the National Institutes of Health. This is a form of corporate welfare that no other industry receives. </p>
<p>American drug companies also spend hundreds of millions lobbying the government. Last year alone, their lobbying tab came to $171.5 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. </p>
<p>That’s more than oil and gas, insurance, or any other American industry. It’s more than the formidable lobbying expenditures of America’s military contractors. Big Pharma spends tens of millions more on campaign expenditures.</p>
<p>They spend so much on politics in order to avoid price controls, as exist in most other nations, and other government attempts to constrain their formidable profits.</p>
<p>For example, in 2003, Big Pharma got a U.S. law prohibiting the government from using its considerable bargaining clout under Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate lower drug prices. Other nations with big healthcare plans routinely negotiate lower drug prices. </p>
<p>During his campaign Trump promised to reverse this law. But the plan he revealed Friday doesn’t touch it. Trump’s plan seeks only to make it easier for private health insurers to negotiate better deals for Medicare beneficiaries. </p>
<p>In reality, private health insurers don’t have anywhere near the clout of Medicare and Medicaid—which was the whole point of Big Pharma’s getting Congress to ban such negotiations in the first place. </p>
<p>In the last few years, U.S. drug companies have also blocked Americans from getting low-cost prescription drug from Canada, using the absurd argument that Americans can’t rely on the safety of drugs coming from our northern neighbor—whose standards are at least as high as ours. </p>
<p>Trump’s new plan doesn’t change this, either. </p>
<p>To put all this another way, when Americans buy drugs in the United States, they really buy a package of advertising, marketing, and political influence-peddling. Consumers in other nations don’t pay these costs. Which explains a big part of why drug prices are lower abroad. Trump’s so-called plan to lower drug prices disregards this reality.</p>
<p>Trump’s plan nibbles at the monopoly power of U.S. pharmaceutical companies, but doesn’t deal with the central fact that their patents are supposed to run only twenty years but they’ve developed a host of strategies to keep patents going beyond then. </p>
<p>One is to make often insignificant changes in their patented drugs that are enough to trigger new patents and thereby prevent pharmacists from substituting cheaper generic versions. </p>
<p>Before its patent expired on Namenda, its widely used drug to treat Alzheimer’s, Forest Labs <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fpresswatch.com%2Fhealth%2F%3Flimit%3D101%26searchterm%3Dannounced&amp;t=OGYxODY5NGEyZTlkYTE5ZjE5ZTcxMzQwMjQyZmM5ZjA1ZGFmNjVhOCw1QXlPZFlQRA%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F99279814665&amp;m=1">announced</a> it would stop selling the existing tablet form of in favor of new extended-release capsules called Namenda XR. Even though Namenda XR was just a reformulated version of the tablet, the introduction prevented generic versions from being introduced. </p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">Other nations don’t allow drug patents to be extended on such flimsy grounds. Trump’s plan doesn’t touch this ploy. </span></p>
<p>Another tactic used by U.S. drug companies has been to sue generics to prevent them from selling their cheaper versions, then settle the cases by paying the generics to delay introducing those cheaper versions. </p>
<p>Such “pay-for-delay” agreements are illegal in other nations, but antitrust enforcement hasn’t laid a finger on them in America—and Trump doesn’t mention them although they cost Americans an estimated <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ftc.gov%2Fnews-events%2Fmedia-resources%2Fmergers-and-competition%2Fpay-delay&amp;t=NWY5M2EwNDVjZjI0MDYxMzkwMGIzMzg5ZGJiYmYyNGU3ODEzMzY3MCxydVpNbVJJZQ%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F119767465905&amp;m=1">$3.5 billion </a>a year.</p>
<p>Even after their patents have expired, U.S. drug companies continue to aggressively advertise their brands so patients will ask their doctors for them instead of the generic versions. Many doctors comply. </p>
<p>Other nations don’t allow direct advertising of prescription drugs—another reason why prices are lower there and higher here. Trump’s plan is silent on this, too. (Trump suggests drug advertisers should be required to post the prices of their drugs, which they’re already expert at obscuring.)</p>
<p>If Trump were serious about lowering drug prices he’d have to take on the U.S. drug manufacturers. </p>
<p>But Trump doesn’t want to take on Big Pharma. As has been typical for him, rather than confronting the moneyed interests in America he chooses mainly to blame foreigners.</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 15 May 2018 09:00:00 +0000230181 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichThe Financial Hardships of Trump’s Friendshttp://prospect.org/article/financial-hardships-trump%E2%80%99s-friends
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<p>Financier Carl Icahn in New York City</p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>he Environmental Protection Agency recently granted to an oil refinery owned by Carl Icahn a so-called “financial hardship” waiver. The exemption allows the refinery to avoid clean air laws, potentially saving Icahn millions of dollars.</p>
<p>Icahn is not exactly a hardship case. According to <em>Bloomberg</em>’s Billionaire Index, his net worth is $21.8 billion. Over the last four decades as a corporate raider, Icahn has pushed CEOs to cut payrolls, abandon their communities, and outsource jobs abroad in order to generate more money for him and other investors. </p>
<p>In 1985, after winning control of the now-defunct Trans World Airlines, Icahn stripped its assets, pocketed nearly $500 million in profits, and left the airline more than $500 million in debt. Former TWA chair C.E. Meyer Jr. called Icahn “one of the greediest men on earth.”</p>
<p>No single person has done more to harm America’s working class than Carl Icahn. Not surprisingly, Icahn was a Trump backer from the start, and has benefited immensely from Trump’s presidency.</p>
<p>When Trump first talked with Scott Pruitt about running the EPA, Trump told Pruitt to meet with Icahn. As Icahn later recounted, “I told Donald that [Pruitt] is somebody who will do away with many of the problems at the EPA.”</p>
<p>Trump then made Icahn his special regulatory adviser, until lawmakers raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest. </p>
<p>Icahn has found other ways to make money off the Trump presidency. Days before Trump announced hefty tariffs on foreign-made steel, Icahn sold off $31.3 million in stock he owned in the Manitowoc Company, a manufacturer of steel cranes. After Trump’s announcement, the company’s shares tumbled. </p>
<p>Icahn says he had no inside knowledge of Trump’s move, but why should anyone believe him? The Trump presidency is awash in conflicts of interest, lies, payoffs to friends, insider deals, and utter disdain for the public.</p>
<p>Icahn’s steel deal was chickenfeed relative to the billions he’ll pocket courtesy of Trump’s tax cut. Icahn is said to have spent $150 million lobbying for it, which makes it one of his best investments so far. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, real financial hardships are bearing down on Americans who are getting no help at all. Flint’s water is still unsafe. Much of Puerto Rico is still in the dark. Last week, HUD Secretary Ben “<a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2F2017%2F05%2F25%2F530068988%2Fben-carson-says-poverty-is-a-state-of-mind&amp;t=YTA0NTIzZjhmODZlNDhhZGQxMmYyMGFiYzQxNTQyZDk2ZWMxZDM2MyxUYkJObGdOQw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F173674777750&amp;m=1">Poverty-Is-A-State-Of-Mind</a>” Carson proposed large rent increases for families receiving housing assistance, explaining that help to the poor “<a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.baltimoresun.com%2Fnews%2Fnation-world%2Fct-hud-rent-changes-20180425-story.html&amp;t=OTg5ODFjZDVmNGI3NWJmODJhOGJkZTdkYzU2OGYwNTM1MzM5NDNlNyxUYkJObGdOQw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F173674777750&amp;m=1">creates perverse consequences, such as discouraging these families from earning more money</a>.”</p>
<p>Rubbish. Low-income Americans are already working hard, many paying half their monthly incomes in rent.</p>
<p>The Trump administration is also allowing states to demand that Medicaid recipients work, although there’s no evidence Medicaid deters people from working. In fact, many low-income Americans are able to work only because they have access to health care via Medicaid. </p>
<p>Trump and his enablers on Capitol Hill are proposing that people receiving food stamp work at least 20 hours a week. Yet over 40 million Americans—including many children and disabled—are already struggling with hunger, and food stamps average only $1.40 per person per meal. </p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">In contrast to their argument that the poor need less help in order to work harder, Trump and his enablers justify regulatory and tax handouts to Carl Icahn and his ilk by arguing the rich need more in order to work harder.</span></p>
<p>But despite the regulatory “relief” and giant tax cut they’re getting, America’s rich aren’t investing more than before.</p>
<p>Corporations have been using savings from the tax cut to buy back their shares of stock at a record pace. Icahn has been among the biggest investors pushing them to do so because buybacks raise stock prices, thereby putting even more money in his pocket. </p>
<p>It’s doubtful Icahn will use the savings from his “financial hardship” waiver to invest in more oil refineries. Profit margins in refining are plummeting.</p>
<p>In reality, Trumponomics is a thin veneer of an excuse for giving America’s rich—already richer than ever—whatever they want, while sticking it to everyone else. </p>
<p>We are rapidly becoming a nation of just two groups. The first are those without any voice, vulnerable to real financial hardship, who are losing whatever meager assistance they had. This includes many white working-class Trump supporters. </p>
<p>The second are those like Carl Icahn—powerful enough to extract benefits from Trump and the GOP by claiming they need such incentives in order to invest. But their neediness is a hoax, and the only significant investments they’re making are pay-offs to politicians.</p>
<p>Far more Americans belong to the first group than to the second. The question is when they will realize it, and vote accordingly.</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 08 May 2018 09:00:00 +0000230142 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichHow to Stop Trumphttp://prospect.org/article/how-stop-trump
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<p>Protesters fill the streets of Washington on Inauguration Day 2017</p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">W</span>hy did working class voters choose a selfish, thin-skinned, petulant, lying, narcissistic, boastful, megalomaniac for president?</p>
<p>With the 2018 midterms around the corner, and prospective Democratic candidates already eyeing the 2020 race, the answer is important because it will influence how Democrats campaign. </p>
<p>One explanation focuses on economic hardship. The working class fell for Trump’s economic populism. </p>
<p>A competing explanation—which got a boost this week from a <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=denied%3A%255Bhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.pnas.org%2Fcontent%2Fearly%2F2018%2F04%2F18%2F1718155115&amp;t=YjRhOWY4OTQ4YzViNGFkMjhkOWUwNDVlZDU4NjI1YzcwY2I0ZDJhZSxPek5uTTNXcg%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F173400442680&amp;m=1">study</a> published by the National Academy of Sciences—dismisses economic hardship, and blames it on whites’ fear of losing status to blacks and immigrants. They were attracted to Trump’s form of identity politics: bigotry.</p>
<p>If Democrats accept the bigotry explanation, they may be more inclined to foster their own identity politics of women, blacks, and Latinos. And they’ll be less inclined to come up with credible solutions to widening inequality and growing economic insecurity.</p>
<p>Yet the truth isn’t found in one explanation or the other. It’s in the interplay between the two. </p>
<p>Certainly many white working class men and women were—and still are—receptive to Trump’s bigotry. </p>
<p>But what made them receptive? Racism and xenophobia aren’t exactly new to American life. Fears of blacks and immigrants have been with us since the founding of the Republic. </p>
<p>What changed was the economy. Since the 1980s the wages and economic prospects of the typical American worker have stagnated. Two-thirds now live paycheck to paycheck, and those paychecks have grown less secure. </p>
<p>Good-paying jobs have disappeared from vast stretches of the land. Despite the official low unemployment rate, millions continue to work part-time who want steady jobs or they’re too discouraged to look for work. </p>
<p>When I was secretary of labor in the 1990s, I frequently visited the Rust Belt, Midwest, and South, where blue-collar workers told me they were working harder than ever but getting nowhere. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, all the economy’s gains have gone to the richest ten percent, mostly the top 1 percent. Wealthy individuals and big corporations have, in turn, invested some of those gains into politics. </p>
<p>As a result, big money now calls the shots in Washington—obtaining subsidies, tax breaks, tax loopholes (even Trump promised to close the “carried interest” loophole yet it remains), and bailouts. </p>
<p>The near meltdown of Wall Street in 2008 precipitated a recession that cost millions their jobs, homes, and savings. But the Street got bailed out and not a single Wall Street executive went to jail. </p>
<p>The experience traumatized America. In the two years leading up to the 2016 election, I revisited many of the places I had visited when I was labor secretary. People still complained of getting nowhere, but now they also told me the system was “rigged” against them. </p>
<p>A surprising number said they planned to vote for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump—the two anti-establishment candidates who promised to “shake up” Washington. </p>
<p>This whole story might have been different had Democrats done more to remedy wage stagnation and widening inequality when they had the chance. </p>
<p>Instead, Bill Clinton was a pro-growth “New Democrat” who opened trade with China, deregulated Wall Street, and balanced the budget. (I still have some painful scars from that time.) </p>
<p>Obama bailed out the banks but not homeowners. Obamacare, while important to the poor, didn’t alleviate the financial stresses on the working class, particularly in states refused to expand Medicaid. </p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">In the 2016 election Hillary Clinton offered a plethora of small-bore policy proposals—all sensible but none big enough to make a difference. </span></p>
<p>Into this expanding void came Trump’s racism and xenophobia—focusing the cumulative economic rage on scapegoats that had nothing to do with its causes. It was hardly the first time in history a demagogue has used this playbook. </p>
<p>If America doesn’t respond to the calamity that’s befallen the working class, we’ll have Trumps as far as the eye can see. </p>
<p>A few Democrats are getting the message—pushing ambitious ideas like government-guaranteed full employment, single-payer health care, industry-wide collective bargaining, and a universal basic income. </p>
<p>But none has yet offered a way to finance these things, such as a progressive tax on wealth. </p>
<p>Nor have they offered a credible way to get big money out of politics. Even if <em>Citizens United </em>isn’t overruled, big money’s influence could be limited with generous public financing of elections, full disclosure of the source of all campaign contributions, and a clampdown on the revolving door between business and government. </p>
<p>Trump isn’t the cause of what’s happened to America. He’s the consequence—the product of years of stagnant wages and big money’s corruption of our democracy.</p>
<p>If they really want to stop Trump and prevent future Trumps, Democrats will need to address these causes of Trump’s rise. </p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 01 May 2018 09:00:00 +0000230101 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichThe Shameful Silence of the CEOshttp://prospect.org/article/shameful-silence-ceos
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<p>Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase &amp; Co., speaks at an Economic Club of Washington event in Washington</p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">C</span>ongressional Republicans would be more willing to stand up to Trump if their major financial backers—big business and Wall Street—had more backbone.</p>
<p>Ever since 1971, when the then future Supreme Court justice Lewis Powell urged corporations to mobilize politically, corporate money has flooded Washington—most of it into Republican coffers. </p>
<p>Today, big corporations and Wall Street essentially own the Republican Party. In the 2016 campaign cycle, they contributed $34 to candidates from both parties for every $1 donated by labor unions and all public interest organizations combined.</p>
<p>They donate far more to Republicans than do extremists like the Koch brothers, and have far more influence over the GOP than does the Tea Party. </p>
<p>Which means the CEOs of America’s largest firms have the power to constrain the most dangerous, divisive, and anti-democratic president ever to occupy the Oval Office. </p>
<p>So why don’t they? What explains their silence?</p>
<p>Consider Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States. Dimon also chairs the Business Roundtable—the most influential confab of major CEOs in America, founded in 1972, just after Powell urged CEOs to mobilize. </p>
<p>Dimon has gone out of his way not to criticize the mad king. While he “strongly disagreed” with Trump’s equating white supremacists to protesters in Charlottesville last summer, he also counseled “not to expect smooth sailing” in the first year of a new administration. </p>
<p>Now well into Trump’s second year, with the sailing more treacherous than ever—Trump has fired most of the adults around him and grown even more erratic and unhinged—Dimon is even more conciliatory. </p>
<p>Asked last week how Trump is doing, Dimon gushed.“Regulatory stuff, good.” The potential summit with North Korea, a “great idea.” He regrets his 2017 prediction that Trump would be a one-term president, telling Fox Business, "I wish I hadn’t said it, I was talking probabilistically.”</p>
<p>Dimon’s reluctance to criticize Trump is particularly curious given Dimon’s public laments about widening inequality, the explosion of student debt, America’s growing racial divide, the failure of inner-city schools, and the expenditure of “trillions of dollars on wars.”</p>
<p>One obvious explanation is found in the money rolling in from the GOP’s new tax law and Trump’s frenzy of deregulation. Profits have soared at JP Morgan and at other big banks and corporations. Compensation for Dimon and other CEOs has exploded. </p>
<p>Never underestimate the power of a fat compensation package to buy up scruples. From the perspective of Dimon and other CEOs, what’s not to like about Trump and the GOP?</p>
<p>It turns out, plenty. As the Republican Party moves toward Trump’s looniness – his xenophobia, isolationism, attacks on the press and on truth, conflicts of interest, anti-Muslim and racist provocations, climate-change denials, proposed cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, dismantling of the Affordable Care Act, and evisceration of the constitutional divide between church and state—Jamie Dimon and his ilk could come out big losers. </p>
<p>Let them try to sustain corporate profits as America slides towards authoritarianism. Try to maintain comfortable lifestyles as America descends into angry populist tribalism. </p>
<p>Besides which, don’t Dimon and other CEOs have a moral responsibility to sound the alarm?</p>
<p>I’m old enough to recall a time when CEOs were thought of as “corporate statesman” with duties to the nation. As one prominent executive told <em>Time </em>Magazine in the 1950s, Americans “regard business management as a stewardship,” acting “for the benefit of all the people.” </p>
<p>CEOs of that era formed the Committee for Economic Development to champion such causes as universal pre-kindergarten and campaign-finance reform.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">Today’s CEOs finance a larger part of our political system, yet they won’t take a stand to save it. </span></p>
<p>The socially-conscious Committee for Economic Development has withered, while the profit-obsessed Business Roundtable (and its louder cousin, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) have become dominant.</p>
<p>The corporate statesmen of the mid-20th century have been replaced by sycophantic Dimons of the 21st—at a time when we need statesmen more than ever. </p>
<p>Democracy is fragile. Two weeks ago, Hungary’s far-right governing party, Fidesz, gained a huge victory in national elections, further tightening Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s grip on power—signaling an end to Hungary’s independent press and a deepening threat to its democracy. </p>
<p>If the leaders of American business remain silent about what Trump’s is doing to American democracy, they will be complicit in its demise.</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 24 Apr 2018 09:00:00 +0000230070 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichWhile China Picks Winners, Trump Picks Losershttp://prospect.org/article/while-china-picks-winners-trump-picks-losers
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<p>The coal-fired Plant Scherer in Juliette, Georgia.</p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">“</span>It’s nonsense that there’s a beautiful free market in the power industry,” Energy Secretary Rick Perry said last week as he pushed for a government bailout of coal-fired power plants.</p>
<p>Republicans who for years have voted against subsidies for solar and wind power—arguing that the “free market” should decide our energy future—are now eager to have government subsidize coal.</p>
<p>Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is also scrapping rules for disposing coal ash, giving coal producers another big helping hand. As if this weren’t enough, a former coal lobbyist has just become No. 2 at the EPA. If Scott Pruitt leaves (a growing possibility), the coal lobbyist will be in charge. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Trump is imposing a 30 percent tariff on solar panels from China, thereby boosting their cost to American homeowners and utilities. The Trumpsters say this is because China is subsidizing solar. </p>
<p>To Trump and his merry band of climate-change deniers, boosting coal is fine. Helping solar is an unwarranted interference in the free market.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">As with so much else, Trump is determined to Take America Backwards Again.</span></p>
<p>Until about a decade ago, the United States was the world leader in solar energy. Federal tax credits along with state renewable electricity standards helped fuel the boom.</p>
<p>Then China decided to boost its own solar industry. State-controlled banks lent Chinese solar companies tens of billions of dollars at low interest rates. Chinese firms now produce three-quarters of the world’s solar panels.</p>
<p>China’s success in solar has inspired China’s new high-tech industrial policy—a $300 billion plan to boost China’s position in other cutting-edge industries, called “Made in China 2025.”</p>
<p>Besides subsidizing these industries, China is also telling foreign (usually American) companies seeking to sell in China that they must make their gadgets in China. As a practical matter, this often means American firms must disclose and share their technology with Chinese firms. </p>
<p>“We have a tremendous intellectual property theft situation going on,” said Trump, just before upping the ante and threatening China with $100 billion in tariffs.</p>
<p>China’s theft of intellectual property is troublesome, but the larger issue of China’s industrial policy is not. The United States has an industrial policy, too. We just don’t do it well—and Trump is intent on doing it far worse.</p>
<p>The U.S. government used to incubate new technologies through the Defense Department, allocating billions of dollars to R&amp;D that spilled over into commercial uses.</p>
<p>Out of this came the internet, new materials technologies, and solar cells that helped propel the United States into space—and, not incidentally, seeded the commercial solar industry. </p>
<p>America’s high-tech companies have continued to depend on government indirectly—feeding off breakthroughs from America’s research universities, along with the engineers and scientists those universities train (think of Stanford and Silicon Valley). Much of this research and training is financed by the U.S. government.</p>
<p>Trump’s original budget would have slashed funding of the National Science Foundation and related research by nearly 30 percent. Fortunately, Congress didn’t go along.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, federal, state, and local governments in the United States spend over $2 trillion a year on goods and services, making them together the biggest purchasers in the world. Due to “buy American” laws, about 60 percent of the content they purchase must be made in America.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://prospect.org/article/connecting-public-transit-great-manufacturing-jobs">Steven Greenhouse points out</a> in April’s <em>American Prospect</em>, a few state and local governments are taking a page out of China’s book—luring foreign firms to the United States to make high-tech products that are good for the environment and good for American workers.</p>
<p>As one example, Los Angeles has contracted with BYD, a Chinese company that’s the world’s leading producer of zero-emissions electric buses, to make its buses in California.</p>
<p>BYD’s huge factory north of Los Angeles has already created 600 well-paid unionized jobs and 200 white-collar jobs.</p>
<p>America has always had an industrial policy. The real question is whether it’s forward-looking (the internet, solar, zero-emissions buses) or backward (coal).</p>
<p>Trump wants a backward industrial policy. That’s not surprising, given that everything else he and his administration are doing is designed to take us backward.</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 17 Apr 2018 09:00:22 +0000230016 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichThe Truth About an Untethered Trumphttp://prospect.org/article/truth-about-untethered-trump
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<p>President Donald Trump leaves after speaking at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington</p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>he petulant adolescent in the White House—who has replaced most of the adults around him with raging sycophants and has demoted his chief of staff, John Kelly, to lapdog—lacks adequate supervision. </p>
<p>Before, he was merely petty and vindictive. He’d tweet nasty things about people he wanted to humiliate, like former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.</p>
<p>Now his vindictiveness has turned cruel. After smearing FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe with unfounded allegations that he lied to investigators, the new Trump made sure McCabe was fired just days before he would have been eligible for a pension after more than 21 years of service.</p>
<p>Before, he was merely xenophobic. He’d call Mexicans murderers and rapists.</p>
<p>Now his xenophobia has turned belligerent. He’s sending thousands of National Guard troops to the Mexican border, even though illegal border crossings are at a record low.</p>
<p>And he’s starting a trade war against China. </p>
<p>China has been expropriating American intellectual property for years. But Trump isn’t even trying to negotiate a way out of this jam or build a coalition of other trading partners to pressure China. He’s just upping the ante—and, not incidentally, causing the stock market to go nuts.</p>
<p>But the most dangerous thing about the new Trump is his increased attacks on American democracy itself.</p>
<p>Start with a free press. Before, he just threw rhetorical bombshells at <em>The Washington Post</em>, CNN, and other outlets that criticized him.</p>
<p>Now he’s trying to penalize them financially, while bestowing benefits on outlets that praise him.</p>
<p>Last week he demanded that Amazon, the corporation headed by the man who owns <em>The Washington Post</em>, pay higher postal rates and more taxes, and that the <em>Post</em> should register as Amazon’s lobbyist. Amazon stock wilted under the attack.</p>
<p>They’re absurd charges. Amazon collects and <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fnews%2Ffact-checker%2Fwp%2F2018%2F03%2F30%2Fpresident-trumps-bundle-of-faulty-claims-about-amazons-cost-to-taxpayers%2F%3Futm_term%3D.d6ed01e6e8d0&amp;t=YTM1MWZjNjg4Y2VjMTFjYjAxMjI5ZTc3ZDBlMzZmNTgzZjRlMDViZSxRM0tOdGsyaw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F172729453060&amp;m=1">pays state sales taxes</a> on its products, and the Postal Service is losing money because of the decline in first-class mail, not package deliveries.</p>
<p>Presumably Amazon can take care of itself. Trump’s attack was intended as a warning to other companies with media connections that they’d better not mess with him</p>
<p>Trump is trying to hurt CNN, too. The day after the Justice Department moved to block AT&amp;T’s purchase of Time-Warner, parent of CNN, he said the deal wasn’t “good for the country.” Few missed the connection.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, he’s praising Trump-adoring Sinclair Broadcasting, signaling to the FCC it should approve Sinclair’s pending $3.9 billion purchase of Tribune Media’s TV stations.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">We’re entering a new and more dangerous phase of Trump’s “divide and conquer” strategy, splitting the nation into warring camps—with him as the most divisive issue.</span></p>
<p>Even Trump’s tweets have become more brazenly divisive. Last week he called his predecessor “Cheatin’ Obama.” When was the last time you heard a president of the United States disparage another president?</p>
<p>He’s more determined than ever to convince supporters that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is in cahoots with Democrats and the FBI to unseat him.</p>
<p>This might give him some protection if Trump decides to fire Mueller, or if Mueller’s investigation turns up evidence that Trump collaborated with Russia to win the election, and Congress moves to impeach him.</p>
<p>“Try to impeach him, just try it,” warned Roger Stone, Trump’s former campaign adviser, last summer. “You will have a spasm of violence in this country, an insurrection like you’ve never seen.”</p>
<p>But Trump’s strategy might just as easily extend beyond Mueller. What happens if in 2020 a rival candidate accumulates more electoral votes, but Trump accuses him or her of cheating, and refuses to step down?</p>
<p>“He’s now president for life,” Trump recently said of Xi Jinping, adding “maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.” Some thought Trump was joking. I’m not so sure. </p>
<p>Democracies require leaders who understand that their primary responsibility is to protect the institutions and processes democracy depends on. The new Trump seems intent on maintaining his power, whatever it takes. </p>
<p>Democracies also require enough social trust that citizens regard those they disagree with as being worthy of an equal say, so they’ll accept political outcomes they dislike. The new Trump is destroying that trust.</p>
<p>Trump untethered isn’t just a more petty, vindictive, and belligerent version of his former self. He’s also more willing to sacrifice American democracy to his own ends. Which makes him more dangerous than ever.</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 10 Apr 2018 09:00:00 +0000229963 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichDollars for Decencyhttp://prospect.org/article/dollars-decency
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<p>Laura Ingraham speaks at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference </p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">L</span>ast Wednesday morning, Laura Ingraham, Fox News’s queen of snark, tweeted that David Hogg—a 17-year-old who survived the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, and has been among the eloquent advocates for gun control—“whines about” being rejected by four universities he applied to. She linked to an article from the <em>Daily Wire</em> calling him a “gun rights provocateur.” </p>
<p>For Ingraham and Fox News, such cruel, ad-hominem attacks are typical. Vitriol helps boost ratings. After all, Fox is a central part of Donald Trump’s America. And Trump, like Fox News, has made bullying and humiliating people into an art form. </p>
<p>But television viewers are also consumers, and the ultimate goal of advertisers isn’t getting them to watch a particular television show. It’s getting them to buy the advertiser’s products. Which has caused a problem for Ingraham.</p>
<p>Shortly after Ingraham’s attack on Hogg, he called for Ingraham’s advertisers to boycott the show. Within days, a slew of them did just that.</p>
<p>As advertisers peeled off, Ingraham tried to take back her comment, saying the “spirit of Holy Week” motivated her to apologize for “any upset or hurt” she might have caused Hogg “or any of the brave victims of Parkland.” </p>
<p>Hogg rejected the apology. “She only apologized after we went after advertisers,” he told <em>The New York Times. </em>He then tweeted to Ingraham that he’d accept her apology “if you denounce the way your network has treated my friends and I in this fight. It’s time to love thy neighbor, not mudsling at children.”</p>
<p>Ingraham’s wasn’t the first venal, personal attack directed at the Parkland student survivors who have been advocating gun control, as amplified by Fox News.</p>
<p>Republican Leslie Gibson, who was running unopposed for a seat in the Maine State House, called Hogg a “moron” and “baldfaced liar,” and Emma González, another Parkland survivor, a “skinhead lesbian.” (This was too much for the good citizens of Maine. Gibson soon dropped out of the race.)</p>
<p>But unlike politicians who only have to survive elections every few years, corporations have to keep their consumers content all the time. </p>
<p>Selling satisfactory products and services is necessary but often not sufficient. Customers also want to feel good about the brands they’re buying. At the least, they don’t want to associate themselves with mean-spirited vitriol. </p>
<p>Liberty Mutual, the giant insurer, called Ingraham’s comments “inconsistent with our values as a company, especially when it comes to treating others with dignity and respect.” Nutrish, a pet food brand, said Ingraham’s comments “are not consistent with how we feel people should be treated.” TripAdvisor explained that Ingraham’s comments “cross the line of decency.” </p>
<p>Such explanations sound as if these companies chose to drop Ingraham’s show in order to be socially responsible. In truth, they’re just being smart at doing what they’re set up to do—make money. When it comes to consumer products, cruelty doesn’t sell. </p>
<p>Johnson &amp; Johnson didn’t explain its decision to pull the plug on Ingraham, but it’s easy to see why it did. The company spends billions each year trying to convince consumers that Tylenol, baby powder, band aides, and its other brands will provide soothing comfort, analogous to a nurturing mother. Yet someone who ridicules a 17-year old shooting survivor for not getting into the college he chose is more like an abusive mother.</p>
<p>Behind all this is a new reality. <span class="pullquote-right">The economy is now centered on intangibles like brand image and intellectual property, whose value can erode if connected with something nefarious.</span> Look at what happened to Facebook.</p>
<p>Social media can speed up this process. Which is why advertisers reacted as quickly as they did to Hogg’s tweet.</p>
<p>It’s also why corporations have quickly ended commercial relationships with famous people accused of sexual harassment and abuse. These companies aren’t being socially responsible, either. They don’t want to sully their brands. </p>
<p>Companies are spending huge amounts seeking to connect their goods to consumers’ values. They know more about those values than anyone. Which suggests that Americans may have had enough cruelty—coming from Laura Ingraham, from Fox News, from Donald Trump, from the Harvey Weinsteins of the land, from whomever. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the rest of us should help the process along, and continue to vote with our consumer dollars for decency.</p>
</div></div></div>Mon, 02 Apr 2018 21:27:23 +0000229906 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichThe Buyback Boondoggle Is Beggaring Americahttp://prospect.org/article/buyback-boondoggle-beggaring-america
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<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>rump and Republicans branded their huge corporate tax cut as a way to make American corporations more profitable so they’d invest in more and better jobs. </p>
<p>But they’re buying back their stock instead. Now that the new corporate tax cut is pumping up profits, buybacks are on track to hit a record $800 billion this year. </p>
<p>For years, corporations have spent most of their profits on buying back their own shares of stock, instead of increasing the wages of their employees, whose hard work creates these profits. </p>
<p>Stock buybacks should be illegal, as they were before 1982. </p>
<p>Stock buybacks are artificial efforts to interfere in the so-called “free market” to prop up stock prices. Because they create an artificial demand, they force stock prices above their natural level. With fewer shares in circulation, each remaining share is worth more. </p>
<p>Buybacks don’t create more or better jobs. Money spent on buybacks isn’t invested in new equipment, or research and development, or factories, or wages. It doesn’t build a company. Buybacks don’t grow the American economy.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">So why are buybacks so popular with corporate CEOs?</span></p>
<p>Because a bigger and bigger portion of CEO pay has been in stocks and stock options, rather than cash. So when share prices go up, executives reap a bonanza. The value of their pay from previous years also rises—in what amounts to a retroactive (and off the books) pay increase on top of their already outrageous compensation.</p>
<p>Buybacks were illegal until Ronald Reagan made them legal in 1982, just about the same time wages stopped rising for most Americans. Before then, a bigger percentage corporate profits went into increasing workers’ wages. </p>
<p>But since corporations were already using their profits for stock buybacks, there is no reason to believe they’ll use their tax windfall on anything other than more stock buybacks.</p>
<p>Let’s not compound the error. Make stock buybacks illegal, as they were before 1982.</p>
</div></div></div>Wed, 21 Mar 2018 09:00:00 +0000229790 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichAmerica's Shkreli Problemhttp://prospect.org/article/americas-shkreli-problem
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<p><span class="dropcap">O</span>n Friday, Martin Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison. What, if anything, does Shkreli’s downfall tell us about modern America? </p>
<p>Shkreli’s early life exemplified the rags-to-riches American success story. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, in April 1983, to parents who immigrated from Albania and worked as janitors in New York apartment buildings. Shkreli attended New York’s Hunter College High School, a public school for intellectually gifted young people, and in 2005 received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Baruch College. </p>
<p>But soon thereafter, Shkreli turned toward shady deals. He started his own hedge fund, betting that the stock prices of certain biotech companies would drop. Then he used financial chat rooms on the Internet to savage those companies, causing their prices to drop and his bets to pay off. </p>
<p>In 2015, Shkreli founded and became CEO Turing Pharmaceuticals. Under his direction Turing spent $55 million for the U.S. rights to sell a drug called Daraprim. Developed in 1953, Daraprim is the only approved treatment for toxoplasmosis, a rare parasitic disease that can cause birth defects in unborn babies, and lead to seizures, blindness, and death in cancer patients and people with AIDS. Daraprim is on the World Health Organization’s list of Essential Medicines.</p>
<p>Months after he bought the drug, Schkreli raised its price by over 5,000 percent, from $13.50 a pill to $750.00. </p>
<p>Shkreli was roundly criticized, but he was defiant: “No one wants to say it, no one’s proud of it, but this is a capitalist society, a capitalist system and capitalist rules.” He said he wished he had raised the price even higher, and would buy another essential drug and raise its price, too. </p>
<p>In February 2016, Shkreli was called before a congressional committee to justify his price increase on Daraprim. He refused to answer any questions, pleading the Fifth Amendment. After the hearing Shkreli tweeted, “Hard to accept that these imbeciles represent the people in our government.” </p>
<p>Shkreli was subsequently arrested in connection with an unrelated scheme to defraud his former hedge fund investors. In anticipation of his criminal trial, Shkreli boasted to the <em>New Yorker</em> magazine, “I think they’ll return a not-guilty verdict in two hours. There are going to be jurors who will be fans of mine. I walk down the streets of New York and people shake my hand. They say, ‘I want to be just like you.’” </p>
<p>During his trial, Shkreli strolled into a room filled with reporters and made light of a particular witness, for which the trial judge rebuked him. On his Facebook page he mocked the <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fnews%2Fbusiness%2Fwp%2F2017%2F07%2F04%2Fprosecutors-want-pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-to-stop-talking%2F%3Futm_term%3D.5b230283cfc8&amp;t=Zjk0ZDY4Njk3NGMxZmEzMmMzMjBmMTViODk4YTRiZmUwMTBmNjgzZixxWXRVb1lITw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F171707813340&amp;m=1">prosecutors,</a>and told news outlets they were a “junior varsity” team. </p>
<p>He retaliated against <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fmartin-shkreli-personal-domain-names-journalists-2017-3&amp;t=MTlhYTBhYWM3MjhkOWFmZTE2OGE5ZTc3NjQ2ZDYwYzEwOTNiZWM5ZCxxWXRVb1lITw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F171707813340&amp;m=1">journalists</a> who criticized him by purchasing internet domains associated with their names and ridiculing them on the sites. “I wouldn’t call these people ‘journalists,’” he wrote in an email to <em>Business Insider</em>. He said on Facebook that if he were acquitted he’d be able to have sex with a female journalist he often posted about online. </p>
<p>After his conviction, Shkreli called the case “a witch hunt of epic proportions, and maybe they found one or two broomsticks.” As she imposed sentence last Friday, the judge cited Shkrili’s “egregious multitude of lies,” noting also that he “repeatedly minimized” his conduct. </p>
<p>Shkreli’s story is tragic and pathetic, but I ask you: <span class="pullquote-right">How different is Martin Shkreli from other figures who dominate American life today, even at the highest rungs?</span></p>
<p>Shkreli will do whatever it takes to win, regardless of the consequences for anyone else. He believes that the norms other people live by don’t apply to him. His attitude toward the law is that anything he wants to do is okay unless it is clearly illegal—and even if illegal, it’s okay if he can get away with it. </p>
<p>He’s contemptuous of anyone who gets in his way—whether judges, prosecutors, members of Congress, or journalists. He remains unapologetic for what he did. He is utterly shameless. </p>
<p>Sound familiar? The Shkreli personality disorder can be found on Wall Street, in the executive suites of some of America’s largest corporations, in Hollywood, in Silicon Valley, in some of our most prestigious universities, and in Washington. If you look hard enough, you might even find it in Trump’s White House. </p>
<p>Face it: America has a Shkreli problem.</p>
<p>Martin Shkreli will spend the next seven years of his life in prison. But what will happen to the other unbridled narcissists now in positions of power in America, who also blatantly defy the common good?</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 13 Mar 2018 11:18:08 +0000229756 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichKushner's Unconscionable Conflictshttp://prospect.org/article/kushners-unconscionable-conflicts
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<p>President Donald Trump speaks with White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner as he departs the East Room of the White House</p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">B</span>efore I turn to Jared Kushner, let me ask: Do you believe the U.S. government does the right thing all or most of the time? </p>
<p>The Gallup organization started asking this question in 1963, when over 70 percent of Americans said they did. Since then, the percent has <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.gallup.com%2Fpoll%2F5392%2Ftrust-government.aspx&amp;t=MzMyZDY1ZDlmNTVkOTQ3OGQxYjZiYWFjZjg2MTZhMDUzZTU1MjgzNyxjUzRQWHFWZw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F171488664700&amp;m=1">steadily declined.</a> By 2016, before Trump became president, only 16 percent of Americans agreed. </p>
<p>Why the decline? Surely various disappointments and scandals played a part—Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, “weapons of mass destruction,” the Wall Street bailout.</p>
<p>But the largest factor by far has been the rise of big money in politics. Most people no longer believe their voices count. </p>
<p>That view is backed by solid research. Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Professor Benjamin Page of Northwestern University analyzed 1,799 policy issues that came before Congress, and <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fscholar.princeton.edu%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fmgilens%2Ffiles%2Fgilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf&amp;t=MzRhOTdkZTgwMGY5ZGNhZTQ3YWVmZjg3NzBiMmI1ZmE4MzkxNmNhYixjUzRQWHFWZw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F171488664700&amp;m=1">found</a> “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” </p>
<p>Instead, Gilens and Page <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fscholar.princeton.edu%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fmgilens%2Ffiles%2Fgilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf&amp;t=MzRhOTdkZTgwMGY5ZGNhZTQ3YWVmZjg3NzBiMmI1ZmE4MzkxNmNhYixjUzRQWHFWZw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F171488664700&amp;m=1">concluded</a>, lawmakers respond to the policy demands of wealthy individuals and moneyed business interests—those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns. </p>
<p>It’s likely far worse now. Gilens and Page’s data came from 1981 to 2002, before the Supreme Court opened the floodgates to big money in its <em>Citizens United</em> and <em>McCutcheon</em> decisions.</p>
<p>Trump and Bernie Sanders—authoritarian populist and progressive populist, respectively – based their shockingly successful campaigns on the public’s outrage at the corruption of our democracy by big money. Sanders called for a “political revolution.” Trump promised to “drain the swamp.”</p>
<p>Trump hasn’t drained it, of course. He’s turned the entire government into a giant bog of lobbyists, real estate moguls, Wall Streeters, and billionaires. </p>
<p>Which brings us to Jared Kushner, the putative swamp-drainer’s son-in-law, and major advisor. </p>
<p>Kushner may yet be indicted in Robert Mueller’s investigation. But it could turn out that Kushner’s most significant contribution to the stench of this administration will come from his financial conflicts of interest. </p>
<p>When he took the White House job, Kushner chose not to follow the usual practice of wealthy people when they join administrations – putting their assets into blind trusts managed by outside experts. </p>
<p>Instead, Kushner retained control over the vast majority of his interest in Kushner Companies, worth as much as $761 million, according to government ethics filings.</p>
<p>So how has Kushner separated his business dealings from his dealings on behalf of the United States? He hasn’t. </p>
<p>The <em>Times</em> <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F02%2F28%2Fbusiness%2Fjared-kushner-apollo-citigroup-loans.html&amp;t=MGQwMmVlMjY4ZjVlNDFlYmJkMDFiZTkwYTkyNzZjNmFmMzYzNWU5ZSxjUzRQWHFWZw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F171488664700&amp;m=1">reported</a> last week that after the CEOs of Citigroup and Apollo Global Management attended White House meetings set up by Kushner, the two firms loaned the Kushner family business more than $500 million. </p>
<p>Furthermore, once the loan was received, the Securities and Exchange Commission <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.marketwatch.com%2Fstory%2Fsec-dropped-inquiry-into-private-equity-firm-one-month-after-it-made-loan-to-kushner-businesses-2018-03-02&amp;t=MTViNTE0ZGFmYmM2N2MyYjM1NGZjNTRmNTQ2ZmZjNGViMDNmNTk4NSxjUzRQWHFWZw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F171488664700&amp;m=1">dropped</a> an inquiry of Apollo Global Management. </p>
<p>Last spring, Kushner’s real-estate firm sought hundreds of millions of dollars directly from the Qatar government, for its distressed property on Fifth Avenue, reports <em>The</em> <em><a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Ftheintercept.chiom%2F2018%2F03%2F02%2Fjared-kushner-real-estate-qatar-blockade%2F&amp;t=NWNiNGIzYzI2N2UzODQ5NzkyNzNjZmUxM2E0NzM3YWE1MzFkZGYyMyxjUzRQWHFWZw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F171488664700&amp;m=1">Intercept</a></em>. Soon after Qatar turned down the request, Kushner supported a diplomatic assault on Qatar that sparked a crisis continuing today.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">Kushner is such an easy mark that officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways to manipulate him with financial deals, according to U.S. intelligence. </span></p>
<p>Kushner insists that he’s done nothing wrong, and there’s no direct evidence he has profited off his position in White House or put personal financial interests ahead of the interests of the American public.</p>
<p>But that’s not the point. Conflicts of interest are always difficult to prove, which is why we have ethics rules to avoid even the <em>appearance</em> of such conflicts.</p>
<p>And it sure looks as if Kushner is using his White House perch to make money for himself, just as is his father-in-law.</p>
<p>It’s as bad for a government official to look as if he’s lining his pockets as for him to actually do so, because the appearance of corruption undermines public trust just as readily as the real thing. And trust is what distinguishes an advanced democracy from a banana republic.</p>
<p>But Trump and the members of his family he’s brought into his White House don’t give a hoot about public trust. They have utter contempt for the common good. Government ethics officials have compared Trump’s administration to a game of whack-a-mole—go after one potential violation, and others pop up.</p>
<p>Perhaps Kushner tells himself that the American public is already so cynical about big money’s takeover of our democracy that his own apparent, or real, conflicts are chicken feed by comparison. </p>
<p>Which may be true. But by adding to the distrust, Kushner is doing his own bit to destroy American democracy—actions almost as treasonous as if he colluded with Russians to make his father-in-law president. </p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 06 Mar 2018 11:13:36 +0000229754 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichThe Moral Movement Against Violencehttp://prospect.org/article/moral-movement-against-violence
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<p>Representative John Lewis addresses a rally protesting the National Rifle Association's annual convention a few blocks away in Atlanta</p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">J</span>oin the Ku Klux Klan and get 10 percent off on your next Fed Ex shipment!</p>
<p>Okay, the National Rifle Association isn’t quite the Klan. But it’s getting closer. For years, big corporations had welcomed the opportunity to accumulate more customers by giving discounts to NRA members, even if they pack assault rifles. </p>
<p>Yet in the aftermath of the shootings in Parkland, Florida, and the activism of high school students, corporations are bailing out of their deals with the NRA. </p>
<p>As we’ve seen with the corporate firings of sleazebag movie moguls and predatory television personalities, nothing concentrates the minds of CEOs like a moral protest that’s gaining traction.</p>
<p>As I said, the NRA isn’t the Klan, but since Trump became president it’s behaved like a subsidiary of the alt-right. </p>
<p>At last week’s CPAC conference, NRA president Wayne LaPierre cloaked his pro-gun address in paranoia about a “tidal wave” of “European-style socialists bearing down upon us,” telling his audience “you should be frightened.”</p>
<p>Most Americans know this kind of talk is bonkers. Not incidentally, most Americans also want gun controls. <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=denied%3Adenied%3A%255Bhttp%3A%2F%2Ftheweek.com%2Fspeedreads%2F756459%2F97-percent-americans-want-universal-background-checks-gun-buyers-67-percent-want-ban-assault-weapons&amp;t=MjllNTIxOTc2ZDRjNWQ4ZWQyMDNkNDNhNDc1YzIzYThjZTRlYzQyNyxCZkcyaGJTVw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F171320826105&amp;m=1">Ninety-seven percent </a>support universal background checks and<a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=denied%3Adenied%3A%255Bhttp%3A%2F%2Ftheweek.com%2Fspeedreads%2F756459%2F97-percent-americans-want-universal-background-checks-gun-buyers-67-percent-want-ban-assault-weapons&amp;t=MjllNTIxOTc2ZDRjNWQ4ZWQyMDNkNDNhNDc1YzIzYThjZTRlYzQyNyxCZkcyaGJTVw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F171320826105&amp;m=1"> 70 percent </a>favor registering all guns with the police. </p>
<p>Preventing gun violence is coming to be seen less as an issue of “gun rights” and more about public morality. “Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?“ Obama asked in 2012, after twenty first-graders were massacred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. </p>
<p>Obama got nowhere, of course, but now change seems to be in the air. Why? I think Donald Trump deserves some credit. . </p>
<p>Trump’s response to the slayings in Parkland has been to urge schools to arm teachers. The proposal is not only wrongheaded—more than <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scientificamerican.com%2Farticle%2Fmore-guns-do-not-stop-more-crimes-evidence-shows%2F&amp;t=MTBmZTkyZjNjNGRmMTU0NmIzNmMyNmNlYTAxMWEwM2JkMTc2YzU2MCxCZkcyaGJTVw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F171320826105&amp;m=1">30 studies</a> have shown that additional guns increase gun violence and homicides—but profoundly immoral.</p>
<p>If the only way to control gun violence is for all Americans arm themselves, we would all be living in a social Darwinist hell.</p>
<p>The moral void of Donald Trump has been a catastrophe for America in many ways, but it’s contributing to a backlash against the systemic abuses of power on which so much violence in American life is founded.</p>
<p>The Parkland students are insisting that adults stand up to the immorality of the NRA. Corporations are responding. So are politicians. “We get out there and make sure everybody knows how much money their politician took from the NRA,” said David Hogg, one of the students. </p>
<p>Similarly, the #MeToo movement is insisting that America wake up to the immoral behavior of powerful predatory men. </p>
<p>Harvey Weinstein and his ilk aren’t killers but they are accused of assaulting and even raping women whose careers depended on them.</p>
<p>For years, these women didn’t dare raise their voices. They were told this was the way the system worked, much as we’ve been told for years there’s no way to take on the NRA.</p>
<p>Would the #MeToo movement have erupted without the abuser-in-chief in the Oval Office? Maybe. But Trump’s personal history—19 women have accused him of sexual misconduct—has helped fuel it.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">The #BlackLivesMatter movement predated Trump, but our racist-in-chief—who criticizes black athletes for protesting police violence—has given it new meaning and urgency as well. </span></p>
<p>The NRA’s position that everyone should carry a gun contrasts with the reality that a black man brandishing one could quite possibly be shot and killed by the police.</p>
<p>The cumulative and growing force of these three intertwined movements comes from a basic premise of our civic life together, which Trump’s moral obtuseness has brought into sharp focus. </p>
<p>In order to survive, people need several things—food, water, a roof over our heads. But the most basic of all is safety. That’s why governments were created in the first place.</p>
<p>If Americans can’t be secure from someone packing an assault rifle, or from the predatory behavior of powerful men, or from the police, we do not live in a functioning society. </p>
<p>Make no mistake. This is all about power—a powerful political lobby that has bullied America for too long, powerful men who haven’t been held accountable for their behavior, police who for too long have been unconstrained. </p>
<p>A moral movement is growing against the violence perpetrated by all of them, making it necessary for both government and business to take action. </p>
<p>It is being led by people whose moral authority cannot be denied: students whose friends have been murdered, women who have been abused, the parents and partners of black men who have been slain. </p>
<p>It is already having a profound impact on America. </p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 27 Feb 2018 11:07:18 +0000229752 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichThe Meaning of Americahttp://prospect.org/article/meaning-america
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<p><span class="dropcap">W</span>hen Trump and his followers refer to “America,” what do they mean?</p>
<p>Some see a country of white English-speaking Christians. </p>
<p>Others want a land inhabited by self-seeking individuals free to accumulate as much money and power as possible, who pay taxes only to protect their assets from criminals and foreign aggressors. </p>
<p>Others think mainly about flags, national anthems, pledges of allegiance, military parades, and secure borders. </p>
<p>Trump encourages a combination of all three—tribalism, libertarianism, and loyalty. </p>
<p>But the core of our national identity has not been any of this. It has been found in the ideals we share—political equality, equal opportunity, freedom of speech and of the press, a dedication to open inquiry and truth, and to democracy and the rule of law. </p>
<p>We are not a race. We are not a creed. We are a conviction – that all people are created equal, that people should be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, and that government should be of the people, by the people, and for the people.</p>
<p>Political scientist Carl Friedrich, comparing Americans to Gallic people, noted that “to be an American is an ideal, while to be a Frenchman is a fact.” </p>
<p>That idealism led Lincoln to proclaim that America might yet be the “last best hope” for humankind. It prompted Emma Lazarus, some two decades later, to welcome to American the world’s “tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” </p>
<p>It inspired the poems of Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, and the songs of Woody Guthrie. All turned their love for America into demands that we live up to our ideals. “This land is your land, this land is my land,” sang Guthrie. “Let America be America again,” pleaded Hughes: “The land that never has been yet /And yet must be—the land where every man is free. / The land that’s mind—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME.” </p>
<p>That idealism sought to preserve and protect our democracy—not inundate it with big money, or allow one party or candidate to suppress votes from rivals, or permit a foreign power to intrude on our elections.</p>
<p>It spawned a patriotism that once required all of us take on a fair share of the burdens of keeping America going – paying taxes in full rather than seeking loopholes or squirreling money away in foreign tax shelters, serving in the armed forces or volunteering in our communities rather than relying on others to do the work. </p>
<p>These ideals compelled us to join together for the common good—not pander to bigotry or divisiveness, or fuel racist or religious or ethnic divisions. </p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">The idea of a common good was once widely understood and accepted in America. </span>After all, the U.S. Constitution was designed for “We the people” seeking to “promote the general welfare”—not for “me the narcissist seeking as much wealth and power as possible.” </p>
<p>Yet the common good seems to have disappeared. The phrase is rarely uttered today, not even by commencement speakers and politicians. </p>
<p>There’s growing evidence of its loss—in CEOs who gouge their customers and loot their corporations; Wall Street bankers who defraud their investors; athletes involved in doping scandals; doctors who do unnecessary procedures to collect fatter fees; and film producers and publicists who choose not to see that a powerful movie mogul they depend on is sexually harassing and abusing women. </p>
<p>We see its loss in politicians who take donations from wealthy donors and corporations and then enact laws their patrons want, or shutter the government when they don’t get the partisan results they seek.</p>
<p>And in a president of the United States who has repeatedly lied about important issues, refuses to put his financial holdings into a blind trust and personally profits from his office, and foments racial and ethnic conflict.</p>
<p>This unbridled selfishness, this contempt for the public, this win-at-any-cost mentality, is eroding America.</p>
<p>Without binding notions about right and wrong, only the most unscrupulous get ahead. When it’s all about winning, only the most unprincipled succeed. This is not a society. It’s not even a civilization, because there’s no civility at its core. </p>
<p>If we’re losing our national identity it’s not because we now come in more colors, practice more religions, and speak more languages than we once did. </p>
<p>It is because we are forgetting the real meaning of America—the ideals on which our nation was built. We are losing our sense of the common good. </p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 20 Feb 2018 10:59:17 +0000229750 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichTrump’s Big Buyback Bamboozlehttp://prospect.org/article/trumps-big-buyback-bamboozle
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<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>rump’s promise that corporations will use his giant new tax cut to make new investments and raise workers’ wages is proving to be about as truthful as his promise to release his tax returns.</p>
<p>The results are coming in, and guess what? Almost all the extra money is going into stock buybacks. Since the tax cut became law, buy-backs have surged to <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=denied%3Adenied%3A%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnbc.com%2F2018%2F02%2F07%2Fcompanies-have-doubled-purchases-of-their-own-stock-since-trump-signed-tax-bill.html&amp;t=ZDk0ZWFlOWYxZjRkZGRhNGVmYzgwOTJhYjU0ODIzMzk2MGFkZmNmNCxxWXJPY1FVWA%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F170667173405&amp;m=1">$88.6 billion.</a> That’s more than <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=denied%3Adenied%3A%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnbc.com%2F2018%2F02%2F07%2Fcompanies-have-doubled-purchases-of-their-own-stock-since-trump-signed-tax-bill.html&amp;t=ZDk0ZWFlOWYxZjRkZGRhNGVmYzgwOTJhYjU0ODIzMzk2MGFkZmNmNCxxWXJPY1FVWA%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F170667173405&amp;m=1">double </a>the amount of buybacks in the same period last year, according to data provided by Birinyi Associates.</p>
<p>Compare this to the paltry $2.5 billion of employee bonuses corporations say they’ll dispense in response to the tax law, and you see the bonuses for what they are—a small fig leaf to disguise the big buybacks.</p>
<p>If anything, the current tumult in the stock market will fuel even more buybacks.</p>
<p>Stock buybacks are corporate purchases of their own shares of stock. Corporations do this to artificially prop up their share prices.</p>
<p>Buybacks are the corporate equivalent of steroids. They may make shareholders feel better than otherwise, but nothing really changes.</p>
<p>Money spent on buybacks isn’t reinvested in new equipment, research, or factories. Buybacks don’t add jobs or raise wages. They don’t increase productivity. They don’t grow the American economy.</p>
<p>Yet CEOs love buybacks because most CEO pay is now in shares of stock and stock options rather than cash. So when share prices go up, executives reap a bonanza.</p>
<p>At the same time, the value of CEO pay from previous years also rises, in what amounts to a retroactive (and off the books) pay increase—on top of their already humongous compensation packages.</p>
<p>Big investors also love buybacks because they increase the value of their stock portfolios. Now that the <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.marineconomicconsulting.com%2Fw20733.pdf&amp;t=Yzc3YzVjNzkxOTViNjAyMmVlMjVjMGU3MjlkMzZmYmE0ZGU5MGE2NCxxWXJPY1FVWA%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F170667173405&amp;m=1">richest 10 percent of Americans own 84 percent </a>of all shares of stock (up from <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.marineconomicconsulting.com%2Fw20733.pdf&amp;t=Yzc3YzVjNzkxOTViNjAyMmVlMjVjMGU3MjlkMzZmYmE0ZGU5MGE2NCxxWXJPY1FVWA%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F170667173405&amp;m=1">77 percent</a> at the turn of the century), this means even more wealth at the top.</p>
<p>Buybacks used to be illegal. The Securities and Exchange considered them unlawful means of manipulating stock prices, in violation of the Securities Acts of 1933 and 1934.</p>
<p>In those days, the typical corporation put about half its profits into research and development, plant and equipment, worker retraining, additional jobs, and higher wages.</p>
<p>But under Ronald Reagan, who rhapsodized about the “magic of the market,” the SEC legalized buybacks.</p>
<p>After that, buybacks took off. <span class="pullquote-right">Just in the past decade, <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/new/%5Bhttp://www.rapidshift.net/major-corporations-are-planning-to-spend-more-than-30x-what-they-are-putting-in-the-wallets-of-employees-on-buying-back-their-own-stock-benefiting-wealthy-shareholders/">94 percent</a> of corporate profits have been devoted to buybacks and dividends</span>, according to researchers at the Academic-Industry Research Network.</p>
<p>Last year, big American corporations spent a record $780 billion buying back their shares of stock.</p>
<p>And that was before the new tax law.</p>
<p>Put another way, the new tax law is giving America’s wealthy not one but <em>two</em> big windfalls: They stand to gain the most from the tax cuts for individuals, <em>and</em> they’re the big winners from the tax cuts for corporations.</p>
<p>This isn’t just unfair. It’s also bad for the economy as a whole. Corporations don’t invest because they get tax cuts. They invest because they expect that customers will buy more of their goods and services.</p>
<p>This brings us to the underlying problem. Companies haven’t been investing—and have been using their profits to buy back their stock instead—because they doubt their investments will pay off in additional sales.</p>
<p>That’s because most economic gains have been going to the wealthy, and the wealthy spend a far smaller percent of their income than the middle class and the poor. When most gains go to the top, there’s not enough demand to justify a lot of new investment. </p>
<p>Which also means that as long as public policies are tilted to the benefit of those at the top—as is Trump’s tax cut, along with Reagan’s legalization of stock buybacks—we’re not going to see much economic growth. </p>
<p>We’re just going to have more buybacks and more inequality.</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 13 Feb 2018 10:00:00 +0000229535 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichTrump's Divide-and-Conquer Strategyhttp://prospect.org/article/trumps-divide-and-conquer-strategy
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<p><span class="dropcap">I</span>f Robert Mueller finds that Trump colluded with Russia to fix the 2016 election, or even if Trump fires Mueller before he makes such a finding, Trump’s supporters will protect Trump from any political fallout. </p>
<p>Trump’s base will stand by him not because they believe Trump is on their side, but because they define themselves as being on <em>his</em> side.</p>
<p>Trump has intentionally cleaved America into two warring camps: pro-Trump and anti-Trump. And he has convinced the pro-Trumps that his enemy is their enemy.</p>
<p>Most Americans are not passionate conservatives or liberals, Republicans or Democrats. But they have become impassioned Trump supporters or Trump haters.</p>
<p>Polls say 37 percent of Americans approve of him, and most disapprove. These numbers are the tips of two vast icebergs of intensity.</p>
<p>Trump has forced all of us to take sides, and to despise those on the other. There’s no middle ground.</p>
<p>The Republican Party used to stand for fiscal responsibility, states' rights, free trade, and a hard line against Russian aggression. Now it just stands for Trump.</p>
<p>Pro-Trump Republicans remain the majority in the GOP. As long as Trump can keep them riled up, and as long as Republicans remain in control of at least one chamber of Congress, he’s safe.</p>
<p>“Try to impeach him, just try it,” Roger Stone, Trump’s former campaign adviser, <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Famericas%2Fus-politics%2Fdonald-trump-roger-stone-impeach-vote-endanger-life-congress-house-senate-white-house-russia-meeting-a7911691.html&amp;t=ZGZkNmQ5NTY5ZmQzMmU4ZmZiYmNkZTRjMmI4YTQzZjkzOGM4NzRiOSxTVjlwUVhrNA%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F170517380275&amp;m=1">warned</a> last summer. “You will have a spasm of violence in this country, an insurrection like you’ve never seen.”</p>
<p>That’s probably an exaggeration, but Trump (with the assistance of his enablers in Congress) has convinced his followers that the Russian investigation is part of a giant conspiracy to unseat him, and that his enemies want to replace him with someone who will allow dangerous forces to overrun America.</p>
<p>Sure, this paranoia is based on the same racism and xenophobia that has smoldered in America since its inception. Trump’s strategy is to stoke it daily. </p>
<p>Sure, American politics had polarized before Trump. Trump’s strategy is to exploit and enlarge these divisions.</p>
<p>A few months ago I traveled to Kentucky and talked with a number of Trump supporters.</p>
<p>They looked and sounded nothing like traditional conservative Republicans. Most were working class. Several were members of labor unions. All were passionate about Trump.</p>
<p>Why do you support him? I asked. “He’s shaking Washington up,” was the typical response.</p>
<p>I mentioned his lies. “He’s telling it like it is,” several told me. “He speaks his mind.”</p>
<p>I talked about his attacks on democracy. “Every other politician is on the take,” they said. “He isn’t. He doesn’t need their money.”</p>
<p>I asked about his campaign’s possible collusion with Russia. They told me they didn’t believe a word of it. “It’s a plot to get rid of him.”</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">By making himself the center of an intensifying conflict, Trump grabs all the attention and fuels even greater passions on both sides.</span></p>
<p>It’s what he did in the 2016 election, but on a far larger scale. Then, he sucked all the oxygen out of the race by making himself its biggest story. Now, he’s sucking all the oxygen out of America by making himself our national obsession.</p>
<p>Trump received more coverage in the 2016 election than any presidential candidate in American history. Hillary Clinton got far less, and what she got was almost all about her emails.</p>
<p>Schooled in reality television and New York tabloids, Trump knows how to keep both sides stirred up: vilify, disparage, denounce, defame, and accuse the other side of conspiring against America. Do it continuously. Dominate every news cycle.</p>
<p>Fox News is his propaganda arm, magnifying his tweets, rallies, and lies. The rest of the media also plays into Trump’s strategy by making him the defining controversy of America. Every particular dispute—DACA, the “wall,” North Korea, Mueller’s investigation, and so on—becomes another aspect of the larger national war over Trump. </p>
<p>It’s the divide-and-conquer strategy of a tyrant.</p>
<p>Democracies require sufficient social trust that citizens regard the views of those they disagree with as worthy of equal consideration to their own. That way, they’ll accept political outcomes they dislike.</p>
<p>Trump’s divide-and-conquer strategy is to destroy that trust.</p>
<p>So if Mueller finds Trump colluded with Russia, or Trump fires Mueller before Mueller makes such a finding, the pro-Trumps will block any consequential challenge to his authority.</p>
<p>Nothing could be more dangerous to our democracy and society.</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 06 Feb 2018 15:46:47 +0000229481 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichThe Political Roots of Widening Inequalityhttp://prospect.org/article/political-roots-widening-inequality
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<p><em>This article appears in the Spring 2015 issue of </em>The American Prospect <em>magazine. <a href="https://ssl.palmcoastd.com/21402/apps/ORDOPTION1LANDING?ikey=I**EF1"><strong>Subscribe here</strong></a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Celebrate our 25th Anniversary with us by <strong><a href="http://act.prospect.org/page/s/25thanniversary">clicking here</a></strong> for a free download of this special issue</em><em>.</em></p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">F</span>or the past quarter-century—at least since Bob Kuttner, Paul Starr, and I founded The American Prospect—I’ve offered in articles, books, and lectures an explanation for why average working people in advanced nations like the United States have failed to gain ground and are under increasing economic stress: Put simply, globalization and technological change have made most of us less competitive. The tasks we used to do can now be done more cheaply by lower-paid workers abroad or by computer-driven machines.</p>
<p>My solution—and I’m hardly alone in suggesting this—has been an activist government that raises taxes on the wealthy, invests the proceeds in excellent schools and other means people need to become more productive, and redistributes to the needy. These recommendations have been vigorously opposed by those who believe the economy will function better for everyone if government is smaller and if taxes and redistributions are curtailed.</p>
<p>While the explanation I offered a quarter-century ago for what has happened is still relevant—indeed, it has become the standard, widely accepted explanation—I’ve come to believe it overlooks a critically important phenomenon: the increasing concentration of political power in a corporate and financial elite that has been able to influence the rules by which the economy runs. And the governmental solutions I have propounded, while I believe them still useful, are in some ways beside the point because they take insufficient account of the government’s more basic role in setting the rules of the economic game.</p>
<p>Worse yet, the ensuing debate over the merits of the “free market” versus an activist government has diverted attention from how the market has come to be organized differently from the way it was a half-century ago, why its current organization is failing to deliver the widely shared prosperity it delivered then, and what the basic rules of the market should be. It has allowed America to cling to the meritocratic tautology that individuals are paid what they’re “worth” in the market, without examining the legal and political institutions that define the market. The tautology is easily confused for a moral claim that people deserve what they are paid. Yet this claim has meaning only if the legal and political institutions defining the market are morally justifiable.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote">Most fundamentally, the standard explanation for what has happened ignores power. </span>As such, it lures the unsuspecting into thinking nothing can or should be done to alter what people are paid because the market has decreed it.</p>
<p>The standard explanation has allowed some to argue, for example, that the median wage of the bottom 90 percent—which for the first 30 years after World War II rose in tandem with productivity—has stagnated for the last 30 years, even as productivity has continued to rise, because middle-income workers are worth less than they were before new software technologies and globalization made many of their old jobs redundant. They therefore have to settle for lower wages and less security. If they want better jobs, they need more education and better skills. So hath the market decreed.</p>
<p>Yet this market view cannot be the whole story because it fails to account for much of what we have experienced. For one thing, it doesn’t clarify why the transformation occurred so suddenly. The divergence between productivity gains and the median wage began in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and then took off. Yet globalization and technological change did not suddenly arrive at America’s doorstep in those years. What else began happening then?</p>
<p>Nor can the standard explanation account for why other advanced economies facing similar forces of globalization and technological change did not succumb to them as readily as the United States. By 2011, the median income in Germany, for example, was rising faster than it was in the United States, and Germany’s richest 1 percent took home about 11 percent of total income, before taxes, while America’s richest 1 percent took home more than 17 percent. Why have globalization and technological change widened inequality in the United States to a much greater degree?</p>
<p>Nor can the standard explanation account for why the compensation packages of the top executives of big companies soared from an average of 20 times that of the typical worker 40 years ago to almost 300 times. Or why the denizens of Wall Street, who in the 1950s and 1960s earned comparatively modest sums, are now paid tens or hundreds of millions annually. Are they really “worth” that much more now than they were worth then?</p>
<p>Finally and perhaps most significantly, the market explanation cannot account for the decline in wages of recent college graduates. If the market explanation were accurate, college graduates would command higher wages in line with their greater productivity. After all, a college education was supposed to boost personal incomes and maintain American prosperity.</p>
<p>To be sure, young people with college degrees have continued to do better than people without them. In 2013, Americans with four-year college degrees earned 98 percent more per hour on average than people without a college degree. That was a bigger advantage than the 89 percent premium that college graduates earned relative to non-graduates five years before, and the 64 percent advantage they held in the early 1980s.</p>
<p>But since 2000, the real average hourly wages of young college graduates have dropped. (See chart below.) The entry-level wages of female college graduates have dropped by more than 8 percent, and male graduates by more than 6.5 percent. To state it another way, while a college education has become a prerequisite for joining the middle class, it is no longer a sure means for gaining ground once admitted to it. That’s largely because the middle class’s share of the total economic pie continues to shrink, while the share going to the top continues to grow. </p>
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<div class="field-item even">Chart data source: Economic Policy Institute Analysis of Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group Microdata</div>
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<p>Data are for college graduates ages 21-24 who do not have an advanced degree and are not enrolled in further schooling. Shaded areas denote recessions. Data for 2014 represent 12-month average from April 2013-March 2014. </p>
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<p>A deeper understanding of what has happened to American incomes over the last 25 years requires an examination of changes in the organization of the market. These changes stem from a dramatic increase in the political power of large corporations and Wall Street to change the rules of the market in ways that have enhanced their profitability, while reducing the share of economic gains going to the majority of Americans. </p>
<p>This transformation has amounted to a redistribution upward, but not as “redistribution” is normally defined. The government did not tax the middle class and poor and transfer a portion of their incomes to the rich. The government undertook the upward redistribution by altering the rules of the game.</p>
<p>Intellectual property rights—patents, trademarks, and copyrights—have been enlarged and extended, for example. This has created windfalls for pharmaceuticals, high tech, biotechnology, and many entertainment companies, which now preserve their monopolies longer than ever. It has also meant high prices for average consumers, including the highest pharmaceutical costs of any advanced nation.</p>
<p>At the same time, antitrust laws have been relaxed for corporations with significant market power. This has meant large profits for Monsanto, which sets the prices for most of the nation’s seed corn; for a handful of companies with significant market power over network portals and platforms (Amazon, Facebook, and Google); for cable companies facing little or no broadband competition (Comcast, Time Warner, AT&amp;T, Verizon); and for the largest Wall Street banks, among others. And as with intellectual property rights, this market power has simultaneously raised prices and reduced services available to average Americans. (Americans have the most expensive and slowest broadband of any industrialized nation, for example.) </p>
<p>Financial laws and regulations instituted in the wake of the Great Crash of 1929 and the consequential Great Depression have been abandoned—restrictions on interstate banking, on the intermingling of investment and commercial banking, and on banks becoming publicly held corporations, for example—thereby allowing the largest Wall Street banks to acquire unprecedented influence over the economy. The growth of the financial sector, in turn, spawned junk-bond financing, unfriendly takeovers, private equity and “activist” investing, and the notion that corporations exist solely to maximize shareholder value.</p>
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<p>Bankruptcy laws have been loosened for large corporations—notably airlines and automobile manufacturers—allowing them to abrogate labor contracts, threaten closures unless they receive wage concessions, and leave workers and communities stranded. Notably, bankruptcy has not been extended to homeowners who are burdened by mortgage debt and owe more on their homes than the homes are worth, or to graduates laden with student debt. Meanwhile, the largest banks and auto manufacturers were bailed out in the downturn of 2008–2009. The result has been to shift the risks of economic failure onto the backs of average working people and taxpayers.</p>
<p>Contract laws have been altered to require mandatory arbitration before private judges selected by big corporations. Securities laws have been relaxed to allow insider trading of confidential information. CEOs have used stock buybacks to boost share prices when they cash in their own stock options. Tax laws have created loopholes for the partners of hedge funds and private-equity funds, special favors for the oil and gas industry, lower marginal income-tax rates on the highest incomes, and reduced estate taxes on great wealth.</p>
<p>All these instances represent distributions upward—toward big corporations and financial firms, and their executives and shareholders—and away from average working people.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, corporate executives and Wall Street managers and traders have done everything possible to prevent the wages of most workers from rising in tandem with productivity gains, in order that more of the gains go instead toward corporate profits. Higher corporate profits have meant higher returns for shareholders and, directly and indirectly, for the executives and bankers themselves.</p>
<p>Workers worried about keeping their jobs have been compelled to accept this transformation without fully understanding its political roots. For example, some of their economic insecurity has been the direct consequence of trade agreements that have encouraged American companies to outsource jobs abroad. Since all nations’ markets reflect political decisions about how they are organized, so-called “free trade” agreements entail complex negotiations about how different market systems are to be integrated. The most important aspects of such negotiations concern intellectual property, financial assets, and labor. The first two of these interests have gained stronger protection in such agreements, at the insistence of big U.S. corporations and Wall Street. The latter—the interests of average working Americans in protecting the value of their labor—have gained less protection, because the voices of working people have been muted. </p>
<p>Rising job insecurity can also be traced to high levels of unemployment. Here, too, government policies have played a significant role. The Great Recession, whose proximate causes were the bursting of housing and debt bubbles brought on by the deregulation of Wall Street, hurled millions of Americans out of work. Then, starting in 2010, Congress opted for austerity because it was more interested in reducing budget deficits than in stimulating the economy and reducing unemployment. The resulting joblessness undermined the bargaining power of average workers and translated into stagnant or declining wages.</p>
<p>Some insecurity has been the result of shredded safety nets and disappearing labor protections. Public policies that emerged during the New Deal and World War II had placed most economic risks squarely on large corporations through strong employment contracts, along with Social Security, workers’ compensation, 40-hour workweeks with time-and-a-half for overtime, and employer-provided health benefits (wartime price controls encouraged such tax-free benefits as substitutes for wage increases). But in the wake of the junk-bond and takeover mania of the 1980s, economic risks were shifted to workers. Corporate executives did whatever they could to reduce payrolls—outsource abroad, install labor-replacing technologies, and utilize part-time and contract workers. A new set of laws and regulations facilitated this transformation.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote">As a result, economic insecurity became baked into employment. </span>Full-time workers who had put in decades with a company often found themselves without a job overnight—with no severance pay, no help finding another job, and no health insurance. Even before the crash of 2008, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics at the University of Michigan found that over any given two-year stretch in the two preceding decades, about half of all families experienced some decline in income.</p>
<p>Today, nearly one out of every five working Americans is in a part-time job. Many are consultants, freelancers, and independent contractors. Two-thirds are living paycheck to paycheck. And employment benefits have shriveled. The portion of workers with any pension connected to their job has fallen from just over half in 1979 to under 35 percent today. In MetLife’s 2014 survey of employees, 40 percent anticipated that their employers would reduce benefits even further.</p>
<p>The prevailing insecurity is also a consequence of the demise of labor unions. Fifty years ago, when General Motors was the largest employer in America, the typical GM worker earned $35 an hour in today’s dollars. By 2014, America’s largest employer was Walmart, and the typical entry-level Walmart worker earned about $9 an hour. </p>
<p>This does not mean the typical GM employee a half-century ago was “worth” four times what the typical Walmart employee in 2014 was worth. The GM worker was not better educated or motivated than the Walmart worker. The real difference was that GM workers a half-century ago had a strong union behind them that summoned the collective bargaining power of all autoworkers to get a substantial share of company revenues for its members. And because more than a third of workers across America belonged to a labor union, the bargains those unions struck with employers raised the wages and benefits of non-unionized workers as well. Non-union firms knew they would be unionized if they did not come close to matching the union contracts.</p>
<p>Today’s Walmart workers do not have a union to negotiate a better deal. They are on their own. And because less than 7 percent of today’s private-sector workers are unionized, most employers across America do not have to match union contracts. This puts unionized firms at a competitive disadvantage. Public policies have enabled and encouraged this fundamental change. More states have adopted so-called “right-to-work” laws. The National Labor Relations Board, understaffed and overburdened, has barely enforced collective bargaining. When workers have been harassed or fired for seeking to start a union, the board rewards them back pay—a mere slap on the wrist of corporations that have violated the law. The result has been a race to the bottom. </p>
<p>Given these changes in the organization of the market, it is not surprising that corporate profits have increased as a portion of the total economy, while wages have declined. (See charts above.) Those whose income derives directly or indirectly from profits—corporate executives, Wall Street traders, and shareholders—have done exceedingly well. Those dependent primarily on wages have not.</p>
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<p>The underlying problem, then, is not that most Americans are “worth” less in the market than they had been, or that they have been living beyond their means. Nor is it that they lack enough education to be sufficiently productive. The more basic problem is that the market itself has become tilted ever more in the direction of moneyed interests that have exerted disproportionate influence over it, while average workers have steadily lost bargaining power—both economic and political—to receive as large a portion of the economy’s gains as they commanded in the first three decades after World War II. As a result, their means have not kept up with what the economy could otherwise provide them. To attribute this to the impersonal workings of the “free market” is to disregard the power of large corporations and the financial sector, which have received a steadily larger share of economic gains as a result of that power. As their gains have continued to accumulate, so has their power to accumulate even more.</p>
<p>Under these circumstances, education is no panacea. Reversing the scourge of widening inequality requires reversing the upward distributions within the rules of the market, and giving workers the bargaining leverage they need to get a larger share of the gains from growth. Yet neither will be possible as long as large corporations and Wall Street have the power to prevent such a restructuring. And as they, and the executives and managers who run them, continue to collect the lion’s share of the income and wealth generated by the economy, their influence over the politicians, administrators, and judges who determine the rules of the game may be expected to grow.</p>
<p>The answer to this conundrum is not found in economics. It is found in politics. The changes in the organization of the economy have been reinforcing and cumulative: As more of the nation’s income flows to large corporations and Wall Street and to those whose earnings and wealth derive directly from them, the greater is their political influence over the rules of the market, which in turn enlarges their share of total income. The more dependent politicians become on their financial favors, the greater is the willingness of such politicians and their appointees to reorganize the market to the benefit of these moneyed interests. The weaker unions and other traditional sources of countervailing power become economically, the less able they are to exert political influence over the rules of the market, which causes the playing field to tilt even further against average workers and the poor.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the trend toward widening inequality in America, as elsewhere, can be reversed only if the vast majority, whose incomes have stagnated and whose wealth has failed to increase, join together to demand fundamental change. The most important political competition over the next decades will not be between the right and left, or between Republicans and Democrats. It will be between a majority of Americans who have been losing ground, and an economic elite that refuses to recognize or respond to its growing distress. </p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 28 Apr 2015 04:00:00 +0000222088 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichPublic Debt and Economic Growthhttp://prospect.org/article/public-debt-and-economic-growth
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">In the election of 1952 my father voted for Dwight Eisenhower. When I asked him why he explained that “FDR’s debt” was still burdening the economy—and that I and my children and my grandchildren would be paying it down for as long as we lived. </span></p>
<p>I was only six years old and had no idea what a “debt” was, let alone FDR’s. But I had nightmares about it for weeks. </p>
<p>Yet as the years went by my father stopped talking about “FDR’s debt,” and since I was old enough to know something about economics I never worried about it. My children have never once mentioned FDR’s debt. My four-year-old grandchild hasn’t uttered a single word about it. </p>
<p>By the end of World War II, the national debt was 120 percent of the entire economy. But by the mid-1950s, it was half that.</p>
<p>Why did it shrink? Not because the nation stopped spending. We had a Korean War, a Cold War, we rebuilt Germany and Japan, sent our GI’s to college and helped them buy homes, expanded education at all levels, and began constructing the largest public-works program in the nation’s history—the interstate highway system.</p>
<p>“FDR’s debt” shrank in proportion to the national economy because the national economy grew so fast. </p>
<p>I was reminded of this by the recent commotion over an error in a <a href="http://scholar.harvard.edu/rogoff/publications/growth-time-debt">research paper</a> by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. </p>
<p>The two Harvard economists had analyzed a huge amount of data from the United States and other advanced economies linking levels of public debt to economic growth. They concluded that growth turns negative (that is, economies tend to collapse into recession) when public debt rises above 90 percent of GDP.</p>
<p>That finding, in turn, fueled austerics, who insisted that the budget deficit (and debt) had to be cut in order to revive economic growth. </p>
<p>But Reinhart and Rogoff’s computations were wrong, and average GDP growth in very-high-debt nations is around 2.2 percent rather than a negative 0.1 percent. </p>
<p>A few days ago, the two offered a defense in an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/opinion/reinhart-and-rogoff-responding-to-our-critics.html?pagewanted=all">op-ed</a> in the New York Times, asserting “very small actual differences” between their critics’ results and their own. </p>
<p>Regardless, Reinhart and Rogoff seem to be correct in one basic respect: Economic growth does seem to be lower in very-high-debt countries. </p>
<p>But the entire debate over their paper’s flaws begs the central question of cause and effect.</p>
<p>Is growth lower because of the high debt? That would still make the austerics' case, even without the magic 90 percent tipping point. </p>
<p>Or does cause-and-effect the other way around? Maybe slow growth makes debt burdens larger. There’s <a href="http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/guest-post-reinhartrogoff-and-growth-time-debt">evidence</a> to suggest this is the case. </p>
<p>If so, government should be fueling growth through, say, spending <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Projects/BPEA/Spring%202012/2012a_DeLong.pdf">more</a>—at least in the short run. </p>
<p>As we should have learned from what happened to “FDR’s debt,” growth is the key. </p>
</div></div></div>Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:44:50 +0000217580 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichThe Xenophobe Partyhttp://prospect.org/article/xenophobe-party
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<p>The xenophobia has already begun.</p>
<p>Senator Rand Paul in a <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/04/senators-tangle-on-boston-bombings-role-in-immigration-overhaul/">letter</a> to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today urged him to reconsider immigration legislation because of the bombings in Boston. “The facts emerging in the Boston Marathon bombing have exposed a weakness in our current system,” Paul writes. “If we don’t use this debate as an opportunity to fix flaws in our current system, flaws made even more evident last week, then we will not be doing our jobs.”</p>
<p>Senator Chuck Grassley, senior Republican senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is responsible for an immigration reform bill, is using much the same language—suggesting that the investigation of two alleged Boston attackers will “help shed light on the weaknesses of our system.”</p>
<p>Can we just get a grip? Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a naturalized American citizen. He came to the United States when he was nine years old. He attended the public schools of Cambridge, Massachusetts, not far from where I once lived.</p>
<p>Immigration reform is not about national security, in any event. It’s about doing what’s right, and giving the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in America—many of them here for years, working at jobs and paying withholding taxes, and many of them children—a path to citizenship.</p>
<p>It’s about making sure they aren’t exploited by employers and others who know they won’t complain to authorities. And giving their families the security of knowing that they can live peacefully and securely without fearing deportation.</p>
<p>That path shouldn’t be so easy as to invite others from abroad to abuse the system, and the nation has every right to demand that undocumented immigrants pay a penalty and move to the back of the queue when it comes to attaining citizenship. But the path should be reasonable, straightforward, and fair.</p>
<p>Other Republicans want President Obama to declare the surviving Boston bombing suspect an “enemy combatant,” in order to question him without any of the protections of the criminal justice system.</p>
<p>Senator Lindsey Graham <a href="http://robertreich.org/post/%5Bhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/22/us/gop-lawmakers-push-to-hold-boston-suspect-as-enemy-combatant.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0">says</a> treating him as an enemy combatant is appropriate “with his radical Islamist ties and the fact that Chechens are all over the world fighting with Al Qaeda.” </p>
<p>Hold it. Tsarnaev was arrested on American soil for acts occurring in the United States. No known evidence links him to Al Qaeda. He is Muslim—so is Graham really saying Muslims are presumed guilty until proven otherwise?</p>
<p>During the Bush administration, the Supreme Court upheld the indefinite military detention of Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen. But he was captured carrying a weapon on an Afghanistan battlefield, and the Court said the purpose of wartime detention was to keep captured enemies from returning to fight, and that “indefinite detention for the purpose of interrogation is not authorized.”</p>
<p>Memo to the Xenophobe Party: The so-called “war on terror” is a war without end. If we arrest American citizens and hold them indefinitely without trials, without lawyers, and without the protection of our system of justice, because we suspect they have ties with terrorists, where will that end?</p>
<p>Our civil rights and liberties lie at the core of what it means to be an American, and we have fought for over two centuries to protect and defend them.</p>
<p>The horror of the Boston Marathon is real. But the xenophobic fears it has aroused are not. I would have hoped United States senators felt an obligation to calm public passions than pander to them.</p>
<p>We need immigration reform, and we must protect our civil liberties. These goals are not incompatible with protecting America. Indeed, they are essential to it.</p>
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</div></div></div>Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:54:09 +0000217561 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichBi-Partisanship We Don’t Needhttp://prospect.org/article/bi-partisanship-we-don%E2%80%99t-need
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>John Boehner, Speaker of the House, revealed why it’s politically naive for the president to offer up cuts in Social Security in the hope of getting Republicans to close some tax loopholes for the rich. “If the President believes these modest entitlement savings are needed to help shore up these programs, there’s no reason they should be held hostage for more tax hikes,” Boehner said in a <a href="http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/05/17616402-boehner-obama-holding-entitlement-reform-hostage-for-tax-hikes?lite">statement</a> released Friday. </p>
<p>House Majority Leader Eric Cantor agreed. He <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/republican-response-obama-budget-89680.html">said</a> on CNBC he didn’t understand “why we just don’t see the White House come forward and do the things that we agree on” such as cutting Social Security, without additional tax increases.</p>
<p>Get it? The Republican leadership is already salivating over the president’s proposed Social Security cut. They’ve been wanting to cut Social Security for years. </p>
<p>But they won’t agree to close tax loopholes for the rich.</p>
<p>They’re already characterizing the president’s plan as a way to “save” Social Security—even though the cuts would undermine it—and they’re embracing it as an act of “bipartisanship.”</p>
<p>“I’m encouraged by any steps that President Obama is taking to save and preserve Social Security,”<a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/republicans-applaud-chained-cpi-in-obama-budget-89831.html?hp=l3"> cooed</a> Texas Republican firebrand Ted Cruz. “I think it should be a bipartisan priority to strengthen Social Security and Medicare to preserve the benefits for existing seniors.” </p>
<p>Oh, please. Social Security hasn’t contributed to the budget deficit. And it’s solvent for the next two decades. (If we want to insure its solvency beyond that, the best fix is to lift the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes—now $113,700.)</p>
<p>And the day Ted Cruz agrees to raise taxes on the wealthy or even close a tax loophole will be the day Texas freezes over.</p>
<p>The president dined with a dozen Senate Republicans Wednesday night. Among those attending was John Boozman of Arkansas, who has <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/republicans-applaud-chained-cpi-in-obama-budget-89831.html?hp=l3">praised</a> Obama for “starting to throw things on the table,” like the Social Security cuts. </p>
<p>That’s exactly the problem. The president throws things on the table before the Republicans have even sat down for dinner. </p>
<p>The President’s predilection for negotiating with himself is not new. But his willingness to do it with Social Security, the government’s most popular program —which Democrats have protected from Republican assaults for almost eighty years—doesn’t bode well. </p>
<p>The president desperately wants a “grand bargain” on the deficit. Republicans know he does. Watch your wallets. </p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:10:02 +0000217402 at http://prospect.orgRobert ReichWhy the AFL-CIO Is Embracing Immigration Reform http://prospect.org/article/why-afl-cio-embracing-immigration-reform
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<p>Their agreement is very preliminary and hasn’t yet even been blessed by the so-called Gang of Eight Senators working on immigration reform, but the mere fact that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Chamber of Commerce President Thomas J. Donohue agreed on anything is remarkable. </p>
<p>The question is whether it’s a good deal for American workers. It is, and I’ll explain why in a moment.</p>
<p>Under the agreement (arrived at last weekend) a limited number of temporary visas would be issued to foreign workers in low-skilled occupations, who could thereafter petition to become American citizens.</p>
<p>The agreement is an important step toward a comprehensive immigration reform package to be introduced in the Senate later this month. Disagreement over allowing in low-skilled workers helped derail immigration reform in 2007.</p>
<p>The unions don’t want foreign workers to take jobs away from Americans or depress American wages, while business groups obviously want the lowest-priced workers they can get their hands on.</p>
<p>So they’ve compromised on a maximum (no more than 20,000 visas in the first year, gradually increasing to no more than 200,000 in the fifth and subsequent years), with the actual number in any year depending on labor market conditions, as determined by the government. Priority would be given to occupations where American workers were in short supply. </p>
<p>The foreign workers would have to receive wages at least as high as the typical (“prevailing”) American wage in that occupation, or as high as the prospective employer pays his American workers with similar experience — whichever is higher.</p>
<p>The unions hope these safeguards will prevent American workers from losing ground to foreign guest-workers.</p>
<p>But employers hope the guest-worker program will also prevent low-wage Americans from getting a raise. As soon as any increase in demand might begin to push their wages higher, employers can claim a “labor shortage” — allowing in more guest workers, who will cause wages to drop back down again. </p>
<p>So why would the AFL-CIO agree to any new visas at all?</p>
<p>Presumably because some 11 million undocumented workers are already here, doing much of this work. The only way these undocumented workers can ever become organized—and not undercut attempts to unionize legal workers—is if the undocumented workers also become legal.</p>
<p>Remember, we’re talking about low-wage work that U.S. employers can’t do abroad<span style="line-height: 1.538em;">—</span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">fast-food cooks and servers, waiters, hotel cleaners, hospital orderlies, gardeners, custodians, cashiers, and the like. (Construction jobs were exempted from the agreement because the building trades are already well-organized and saw more risk than gain from guest-workers.)</span></p>
<p>They’re the fastest-growing job categories in America, and also the lowest-paying. According to <a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/ocwage_03292013.pdf">new data</a> out last Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, seven of the ten largest occupations in America now pay less than $30,000 a year. </p>
<p>A full-time food prep worker<span style="line-height: 1.538em;">—</span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">the third most-common job in the U.S.</span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">—</span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">earned $18,720 last year. Cashiers and waiters pocketed less than $21,000.</span></p>
<p>The trend is in the wrong direction<span style="line-height: 1.538em;">—</span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">toward even more of these jobs, and lower pay. And that’s not because of undocumented workers. It’s because of structural changes in the economy that have shipped high-wage manufacturing jobs abroad and replaced other semi-skilled work with computers and robots. If you don’t have the right education and connections, you’re on a downward escalator.</span></p>
<p>The real median wage of Americans is already 8 percent below what it was in 2000. The median pay of jobs created during this recovery is<a href="http://nelp.3cdn.net/8ee4a46a37c86939c0_qjm6bkhe0.pdf"> less</a> than the median of the jobs lost in the downturn.</p>
<p>One way to reverse this trend is enable these workers to join together in unions, and demand better pay and working conditions. And one strategy for accomplishing this is for the unions to embrace immigration reform, and organize like mad.</p>
<p>This is the next frontier for organized labor. Immigration reform is part of its long-term strategy.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:09:00 +0000217346 at http://prospect.orgRobert Reich